Fleet Street is to lose its last religious affairs correspondent next week when Ruth Gledhill leaves The Times.
Gledhill has confirmed her position is being made redundant as she leaves the paper after 27 years.
The Daily Telegraph has a social and religious affairs editor, John Bingham, but Gledhill is believed to be the last full-time UK national newspaper reporter dedicated to covering religion.
Meanwhile, Caroline Wyatt was appointed as the BBC News’s religious affairs correspondent after seven years working as a defence correspondent for the corporation last week. She replaces Robert Pigott, who is moving to become a BBC news correspondent.
Ruth had the highest standards and was knowledgeable about her field. I think her being let go is deplorable. I commend the website Get Religion, which points out over and over again how often stories about crime, or economics, or sports superstars, have a religion element central to the story (what Get Religion calls the ‘ghost’ in the story) but the journalist doing the piece fails to register it.
1. Ruth has certainly fought the good fight and I am very sorry her tenture has come to an end.
2. I can certainly understand the economic argument. Newspapers seem to be in terminal decline and in the end they have to make money.
3. Whilst the significance of stories about religious life in England has surely decreased (simply put, fewer people in the UK give a darn), religion is an issue on the global news agenda in a way unparallelled in my lifetime. Like any other sophisticated, complex, storied area of human activity – having specialist reporters at least attempts to report on this complexity knowledgeably. When papers see the need for specialists in horse racing, football, cricket etc. – let alone stock market, economics, politics – to remove a religion specialist will IMO diminish their ability to report on a hugely significant area of human life.
4. Thanks Ruth for all your hard work and best wishes for whatever comes next.